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Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

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Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#131

Post by adrianwaj »

jaffa2 wrote: post #96
adrianwaj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am starting to think the top half of the screen should be the desktop, the bottom half should be the start menu but already activated and full of programs. No conventional bottom panel-bar with a start button. A right-most column should exist that fills up with a list of opened windows. [1] When I first saw Win95 with a cleared desktop, I immediately thought - where has everything gone? Why is this empty? Decades l…

I just turn off desktop icons. Bam! Problem of messy desktop goes away.

[dead]

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#132

Post by zozbot234 »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #69

I really wish Windows 11 had a Windows 2000 mode. I want a grey, boxy UI, but I also want al the modern technologies Windows has introduced since—DirectStorage, D3D12, fast SSDs, device-independent pixels and vector UIs, all written directly against a Windows API that is modernised, safe, and easy to use. No React, no ads in my weather app; the only browser on my computer will be the browser itself.

> I really wish Windows 11 had a Windows 2000 mode. I want a grey, boxy UI, but I also want al the modern technologies Windows has introduced since—DirectStorage, D3D12, fast SSDs, device-independent pixels and vector UIs, all written directly against a Windows API that is modernised, safe, and easy to use. No React

I know that you said "no React" but you might want to try ReactOS. Of course if you don't need Windows-specific driver support Linux+Wine might suffice for your needs.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#133

Post by teddyh »

lproven wrote: post #92
jchw wrote: post #13

Probably also worth dropping this here in the off chance someone here will be part of today's lucky 10,000. http://toastytech.com/guis/ At first glance it looks like this is much more breadth over depth. Quite an array of systems here.

ToastyTech is wonderful but don't forget GUIdebook, which also is. https://guidebookgallery.org/

More:

• https://ui.codexpanse.com/>

• https://history.vpon.me/>

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#134

Post by BoppreH »

skydhash wrote: post #128
BoppreH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also lost clearly identifiable buttons, loading bars (replaced with throbbers), status bars that tell you what you're hovering over and what the program is doing, stable UIs to develop muscle memory, etc. But we did gain some nice things! - Tabs. - Titlebar buttons and other space-saving measures. - Document editors remembering unsaved changes. - Forms that validate on focus lost, instead of submission. - Ctrl+P m…

> Ctrl+P menus to fuzzy-search all actions and settings Wasn’t that in Emacs for decades?

Probably! To quote William Gibson, "the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed". I'm sure you can find some of these features all the way back in The Mother of All Demos, the difference now is that they're more common.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#135

Post by foobarbecue »

Liftyee wrote: post #98
bronlund wrote: post #32

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

I'm curious - how often do you use the scrollbar? For me, almost never (or only as an indication of progress through a document). I'm scrolling only with wheel or arrows or PgUp etc. Perhaps though this is learned behaviour from scrollbars being tiny. I'd rather have the extra screen space. The scrollbar is usually a nuisance when I accidentally touch it (touchscreen) and the page jumps away.

When reading a document in a browser, I rely on the scrollbar to know things like: how long is it? Where am I in the document? How much of the document is on my screen right now?

This is critical for decisions like: "Should I read the whole thing?" and for building a mental map of the whole document.

I use the scrollbar to scroll between parts of the document if I need to flick back and forth quickly, say between the data and the interpretation, once I have that mental map and know where things roughly are.

While reading, I'm dragging or wheeling.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#138

Post by red_admiral »

bityard wrote: post #112
Liftyee wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - how often do you use the scrollbar? For me, almost never (or only as an indication of progress through a document). I'm scrolling only with wheel or arrows or PgUp etc. Perhaps though this is learned behaviour from scrollbars being tiny. I'd rather have the extra screen space. The scrollbar is usually a nuisance when I accidentally touch it (touchscreen) and the page jumps away.

For mouse users, clicking and dragging the scrollbar is the fastest and most intuitive way to scroll through a large document or list. (The scroll wheel, if you have one, is much slower.)

Until some dolt decides to build "infinite scroll" - I've seen dragging the scrollbar with the mouse cause JS exceptions to be thrown on some pages. One for the UI hall of shame.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#140

Post by red_admiral »

Unai wrote: post #83
bronlund wrote: post #32

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

Have you been unable to find a DE or a DE theme with that type of UI/UX? I haven't looked into it, since I don't have these issues and prefer a more modern look, but surely there must be options out there if that's what you want.

The latest KDE with a suitable theme actually comes quite close.
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